


Bruises Like Watermarks

by Zaccari



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-14
Updated: 2011-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:59:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaccari/pseuds/Zaccari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ownership is least of what the marks mean</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bruises Like Watermarks

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is fiction, made up and I mean no harm to the real people behind the personas. I own nothing, owe much, but if you want to sue me, will accept a child as payment?

~Tommy's POV~

Here’s a newsflash for you – Adam has a thing for biting.

And I know how surprised you aren’t, because everybody’s seen the pictures, right?

But the thing a lot of, or, you know, just about all, people don’t understand is the marks are never about marking his territory. I mean, c’mon, my lover is Adam Fucking Lambert, do you honestly think there’s all of a second in any given day that I don’t know who I belong to?

Really?

Yeah, there might have been five minutes back in the beginning when confusion got twisted up in denial but I’m not overstating it when I say that was a fucking lifetime ago.

Even without the whole fucking each other thing, Adam changed my life.

All of it. Everything. Completely.

The other thing people don’t always get when it comes to Adam though is what you see isn’t everything you get. Sure, when he’s dressed in a purple top-hat it’s like Adam amped up to twenty and when he’s deep throating his microphone that’s still my boy. The smile that overcomes his face when he’s holding Riff is just as real as the one he’ll give some gay boy at a concert who’s trying to find himself by copying Adam’s every move and rhinestone. That’s all Adam, but it gets me so fucking pissed when everybody thinks that because of Adam puts so much on display that it means they get everything, like he’s so easily read.

In his own words, an open book.

Sure, Adam might actually believe he is for the most part, but yeah, no.

Because where in the that book is the guy that cries just because he’s so fucking tired of everything that the words alone can’t let the pent up emotion out? Or the guy that screams because sometimes he doesn’t know what else to do?

Adam throws things once in a while for much the same reason.

Somewhere in there is the man that tells me to fuck off because why was I kissing Isaac, as well as the guy that doesn’t get why once in a while I just don’t want to admit Brad even exists.

He likes loud and crowds and everything that fucking sparkles. Sometimes I won’t even leave my bedroom because the living room is too public. He loves me but will never understand how I can go days without actually speaking out loud.

And if Adam the person is all of that, as well as the pop culture addict that is currently painting his bedroom varying shades of aqua, lavender and peacock, why would anything involved in his sex life be just about sex?

But, just like everything revolving around Adam, there is no instruction manual and nobody will let you buy a vowel. Adam maybe generous to a fault, but his friends want you to prove your worth. They know what Adam’s value and there’s no fucking way they’re letting just anybody into their universe.

~*~

 _“What’re we doing?”_

 _We’re laying on the floor, side by side in front of his TV, there’s a leg thrown over my hip, a hand buried in my hair, only one button still holding my shirt together and Adam wants to know what we’re doing?_

 _I thought I was meant to be the confused one here._

 _“Do you honestly really need me to draw you a road map right now? Because I would have thought the terrain would have made the destination totally obvious myself.”_

 _Adam may still have all of his shirt buttons done up, but his hair and his mouth are just as fucked up as mine are._

 _Nobody wears sex like Adam does, but up until now I never realised how much better he looked when it wasn’t applied by Sutan’s brush._

 _“This isn’t happening.”_

 _Say what?_

 _“What the fuck are you talking about, Adam? What isn’t happening?”_

 _I will not overreact. I won’t._

 _Much._

 _“This!”_

 _The hand that’s not still knotted in my hair is waving circles around nothing in the air, but he’s not moving, or removing, anything else._

 _“Adam, I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. What this? Making out? Fucking? Dry humping on your living room floor? You’re going to give me more detail, and less drama, to work with.”_

 _“Us. This. It’s not happening.”_

 _Well, that was pretty much the exact opposite of what I requested, wasn’t it?_

 _I really don’t want to do this, but I’m pushing Adam away as I sit up and do up two more buttons of my shirt. By the time I’m done, Adam is upright and walking away from me._

 _That is so not going to happen._

 _Grabbing his hand stops him and, since apparently I have to be the grown-up, touching him helps me remember why the fuck I’m here in the first place._

 _I like this guy. A lot. In every sense of the word._

 _And I’m allowed to be scared about that, I’m the one that’s never done guys before._

 _“Okay, why isn’t this happening?”_

 _“Because.”_

 _So not an answer, but I can, and will, wait until he elaborates._

 _“You’re not even bi, so forget about gay, and despite what everybody seems to think, I don’t do straight guys, ever. This is a mistake, you need to go home and I need to…something.”_

 _See, now that I can deal with._

 _“I’ll be honest here, Adam, I have no idea what kind of label I’m supposed to be putting on myself. There’s no fucking way I’m gay, but bi? I don’t know, maybe. One thing I do know is I’m not going to wake up tomorrow and cry rape. I’m here, right now, because I want to be, and yeah, I have no fucking idea what might come next, but this isn’t a mistake. Anything that involves you will never be a mistake to me.”_

 _“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to cope with you screaming at me that I fucked you up, Tommy.”_

 _“Despite appearances, I’m nearly thirty, Adam, and an adult who is more than capable of taking responsibility for his own actions. I’m not drunk or stoned and I know exactly who I’ve been kissing for the last half an hour. There’s also no fucking mistaking that between your legs is one very big, very hard cock. C’mon, Adam, you have to be able to feel how fucking turned on I am myself, and it’s not because I’m closing my eyes and picturing Natalie Portman. Every fucking sense I have is full of nothing but you right now, and I fucking love it.”_

 _“You want this? Me?”_

 _Now is not the time for bullshit._

 _“I want to keep kissing you, and see if I can get you blowing your load in your pants like it’s high school all over again. Am I ready for naked, clothes off and fucking? Probably, definitely, not. I don’t have any promises I can give you right now, Adam, and if we’re being honest, there’s fuck all you can give me as well, but I want to…fuck, I don’t know how to say this.”_

 _“Would you be okay if we just paced this out? Walked into it with both our eyes wide open, no expectations and the only promise made is we talk to each other if anything, at all, changes?”_

 _“Yeah, I would be.”_

 _Adam moves then, shifting until his back is against the sofa and then he’s tugging me towards him, patting his legs._

 _“C’mere and sit straddling my thighs. If you want us both to stay dressed, for the most part, and still ending up coming, this’ll work.”_

 _As soon as I shift I know it’s going to do more than work. Fuck, I can feel Adam’s dick against my ass and with the smallest rocking of my hips, which there’s no fucking way I can resist doing, my cock’s rubbing against Adam’s stomach. Holy hell, that’s good._

 _“Fuck, yeah, baby, that’s it, you have the control, you can get us both off.”_

 _I can, can’t I?_

 _“And what’re you going to be doing?”_

 _There’s no way I can stop myself from moving, not when Adam’s lifting his hips to meet my backside every time I come back to push against him. Just like there’s no way I can change the fact every thrust forward into Adam’s body is getting harder, closer and longer._

 _“F-fuck, Tommy, god, baby, yeah…don’t stop. Can I, aww, fuck, please, let me…your shirt, gone, please?”_

 _“Yeah.”_

 _Even as my shirt is being pushed down my arms, my mouth is at Adam’s jaw, kissing along the bone until his ear lobe is in my mouth and that’s one part of the body I never thought I’d be sucking on Adam. But the next time his hips meet my ass, he’s holding me down against him as he pants and swears under his breath._

 _All I can do is shift myself forward, taking away even the minimal space we had left between us and by the time my shirt is who the fuck knows where all I want is Adam’s mouth somewhere, anywhere, on me._

 _It lands on my shoulder, then an inch below my collarbone, latches on._

 _“Oh fuck, oh fuck, ohfuckohfuckohfuck!”_

 _Yeah, I’ve got no idea how this went from a serious conversation to this as quickly as it did, but damned if I’m gonna be complaining any time soon. Not when I can feel my skin between Adam’s teeth as he works the flesh. Biting, then sucking, then kissing over and over. Not when he finally takes one hand from my hip and twists it in my hair, pulling until he gets the access I had no intention of denying him anyway._

 _Not when it’s all I can do to pant into his throat as the orgasm I knew was coming explodes throughout my fucking universe._

 _Adam bites down on the bruise one last time as he pulls and pushes and grinds his way through his own explosion._

 _“Oh fuck.”_

 _“Indeed.”_

 _God I can’t wait to see the bruise he left._

~*~

I realise, eventually, that mark just below my collarbone meant ‘Please?’

And an unsaid ‘Take a chance?’ followed close behind the thought of maybe we were doing this after all.

Whatever this was, or is.

Sure, Adam talks all the fucking time, but you’re missing out on a lot of important shit if you don’t pay attention to the silences as well.

~*~

 _“I can’t do this.”_

 _Even though it wasn’t said, we both heard the ‘anymore’ that should have ended the statement._

 _“Okay.”_

 _“That’s it? Really, Tommy, that’s your only answer? ‘Okay’? Please, enlighten me, what the fuck is okay with any of this? You fucking anything with a pussy or me making excuses to every fucking one of our friends when you disappear with Miffy, Mindi or Mandy? Or does the okay thing come into play when you don’t disappear and fuck them in front of everybody? God knows that’s always my favourite, live het porn, just what every gay guys wants to see with the guy that he’s…yeah, whatever the fuck we’re doing.”_

 _Adam’s itching for a screaming match; he wants it to be brutal, loud and heard echoing around the house for hours after we’re done but I can’t give it to him._

 _That’s the whole problem, I can’t give him anything that he actually needs._

 _“You said you can’t do this, and I said okay. If you can’t do it, Adam, don’t do it, stop doing it. We said we talk if something changed and I’m guessing from what you said it has. So…okay.”_

 _I don’t have to look up at Adam to know he’s shaking, that his hands are clenched so tightly he’s currently bruising his palms and that’s a good thing because I can’t look at him at all. I’m fully aware of all my faults, including the passive/aggressive bullshit currently seeping from my pours._

 _“Why do I let you treat me like this?”_

 _There’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately._

 _“I don’t know, Adam, why?”_

 _Maybe you’ll have the answers that I don’t._

 _“No, you ass, you don’t get to do it this way, not now.”_

 _I don’t realise Adam’s even moving until he’s kneeling in front of me, grabbing my jaw and forcing me to look at him. There’s not a speck of makeup on his face, his hair is flat and, fuck, he’s gorgeous._

 _And he looks like I’ve used his heart as a piñata, beating it over and over until it finally broke. Strangely enough there’s no candy spilling all over the floor, though._

 _“Whether you realise it or not, you are the most submissive creature to ever cross my fucking path, Tommy Joe, but even that’s not going to save your ass right now. We said we’d talk if anything changed, both of us, so talk you fucking will. I’m not going to walk away until the fucking word ‘leave’ comes out of your mouth, but believe me when I say things are fucking changing one way or another from this moment on.”_

 _My mouth opens and a second later, Adam forces it shut._

 _“You forfeited your right to first say, Tommy, so do what you do best and sit there and be quiet. Also, try fucking listening for once in your life.”_

 _A nod is my only answer, because even I know if I say ‘okay’ right now I won’t regain consciousness until tomorrow._

 _“I want you. I want to keep you, learn how to love you and tell my whole fucking world that you are spoken for, taken and fucking owned. Mine, mine, mine. Mine! And that fucking means that as of now you will stop fucking anybody that isn’t me. I don’t care if they’re male, female, or bovine, your ass and your cock will no longer be open for any business that isn’t me. You will stop this ‘I can fucking leave you anytime I want, Adam Lambert is nothing to me’ bullshit. You will learn to fucking ask me for what you want without me having to play twenty questions and unless you walk out that door in the next five minutes, you will be on my bed, spread out and naked with me teaching you exactly how it feels to take my cock tonight. This isn’t a negotiated merge, it’s a fucking hostile takeover. They’re my terms and conditions, Tommy Joe, take them or get the fuck out.”_

 _Adam sits back on his heels but doesn’t let go of my jaw and doesn’t let me look away. He wants nothing short of surrender, and I don’t fucking know if I have a white flag to wave._

 _“What if I’m not ready?”_

 _“Emotionally? I don’t fucking care anymore. Physically? You will be by the time I’m done. Four minutes, Tommy Joe.”_

 _He does care, he wouldn’t be Adam if he didn’t. This’ll be the first time he fucks me, and if I stay, I guess my job is to make sure he doesn’t try and off himself because he thinks he forced me tomorrow morning._

 _If I stay._

 _Yeah, right. ‘If.’_

 _“Three minutes and counting, Thomas.”_

 _Deep down, or, maybe, not so fucking deep, I wanted Adam to force my hand, and if this is the last time I’m going to get away with it, then I guess I’d better make it count._

 _Removing Adam’s hand from my face takes nothing more than a gentle nudge at his arm and I guess he really doesn’t know what to expect when I stand up. One deep breath steadies me enough to take that first step – towards Adam’s bedroom. I lose both my shoes and socks before I’m out of the living room, my t-shirt and hoodie are dropped somewhere in the hall. My jeans are dropped at the foot of Adam’s bed and ten minutes later when he walks into the room I’m standing naked beside the bed, head down, reminding myself to breath and just waiting._

 _“Tell me, Tommy, say the fucking words.”_

 _“I’m doing this, we’re doing this. No more fucking around on all counts. I’m surrendering and capitulating and I’ll offer myself up on a platter if I fucking have too.”_

 _“Close, baby, you’re real close, but I need you say the actual words. You know what I want to hear, Tommy Joe.”_

 _C’mon, Ratliff, it’s the least of what Adam deserves from you._

 _“I’m…I’m yours. I want this. And you.”_

 _“That’s it, baby, that’s exactly it. Get on the bed, Tommy, face down. You can pillow your head on your arms, but I need your legs open as wide as they’ll go, baby. Show me what you’ve got, let me see what I get to play with.”_

 _The cotton of Adam’s sheets is cool against my heated face when I move into position and I’m grateful that at least I can hide a little this way, but my cock is kind of constricted, even when my legs are spread further than I ever thought they’d go. It’s not embarrassing, exactly, but I’m a guy and the guy isn’t normally the one so…vulnerable, I guess._

 _I can hear Adam moving around, opening and closing drawers and cabinets, hopefully losing some of his own clothes, but he hasn’t touched me, not once._

 _“Adam?”_

 _“Patience, baby, I’m here. I’m just getting ready, and looking. I like to look before I touch. I like to form a plan. You know, will I fuck your hole with my fingers, or my tongue before I ram my cock in there. Will I bite you there, or where that nonexistent ass of yours meets your legs? How far down will I lick, how far up will I kiss, I like planning all of that.”_

 _“A-Adam.”_

 _“Oh yes, sweet baby, you know my name now, don’t you? And just so you can’t say you weren’t warned, if you forget it again you’ll be tied to this fucking bed, wearing nothing but a cock ring and a vibrator while I take a flogger to your back, marking you so beautifully all over. Are we clear, Tommy Joe?”_

 _“Y-yes.”_

 _Oh god, even ass virgin me realises I’m not meant to be fucking the bed right now, but does he think I’m made of steel? Yes, my dick might be harder than said metal, but Adam’s dirty talk is fucking…filthy, and staying still is impossible._

 _Right up until Adam’s hand slams down hard, right on my ass._

 _“Stop it, Tommy Joe. This is my game, you owe me, and you know it. But if it makes you feel any better, I know where I’m starting now.”_

 _No, I never realised until right that second that a mouth on your ass felt so damn good, or how hard it would be to not do fucking anything._

 _But Adam’s right, I owe him._

 _And I want this. With him._

 _Two hours later the bed’s totalled, I’m sore, everywhere, there’s come in my hair, my ear and on the headboard._

 _Adam looks like he’s king of the world._

 _My world._

 _It takes all the energy I don’t have left to breathe one single word._

 _“Adam’s.”_

 _“That’s right, Tommy Joe, you’re Adam’s.”_

 _Thank fuck._

~*~

The bruises, stacked one on top of the other, sucked along my bottom rib were what told me everything was okay, that before then there weren’t lines to be crossed, but there sure as hell were now.

Nothing was defined before that night, everything was defined by that night, and I had no intention of ever giving Adam a reason to be disappointed in me. Well, at least not one big enough that we couldn’t overcome it, because let’s face it, I’m always going to fuck up.

I liked belonging to Adam.

I liked the night I spent tied to the bed in the exact manner Adam described a whole lot too. I asked for it, literally, with words and everything.

I might like making Adam speechless a lot too.

Adam’s thing for marking me kind of got out of hand after that though. Because after a night spent doing nothing more than making out for hours - let’s hear it for buses - I didn’t realise the hickey Adam had left was visible to the world every time I turned to watch Adam on stage.

A week later there was another one that Adam knew my favourite hoodie wouldn’t cover. Two days after that nothing short of a turtleneck was going to work because damn near front and centre was a love bite that to this fucking day I don’t know how Adam made that particular shade of purple.

Please, by then even my Mom had gotten the message Adam was trying to send.

Mine.

Did the stupid man think I was going to argue with him or something? Fuck, doesn’t he know I’ve always been his?

Even when I was too stupid to know it myself, or, maybe, especially then.

~*~

 _“Please, Tommy.”_

 _Please Tommy? What?_

 _Slowly, I drag my tongue along the length of his cock, before kissing the head and just for a second, sucking the pre-come leaking fucking everywhere and then I’m sliding up his body, rubbing, rocking and getting as fucking tactile as I want to._

 _And fuck knows I want._

 _“Please, Tommy, what, baby? I’ll give you everything, anything, whatever you want, Adam, it’s already yours.”_

 _“Need...”_

 _God, he is so fucking wrecked. I love it._

 _“What do you need, Babyboy? C’mon, you know you can tell me anything, ask for anything, so c’mon, what do you want?”_

 _A whimper is all Adam answers with, not actual words. I know I’m not in control, I’m just borrowing it for a minute or five, so my head ducks, nuzzling at Adam’s throat, kissing along his collarbone, biting softly until there’s a nipple beneath my mouth to suck at. Fuck, nothing tastes as good as Adam and sex and if I live forever I’ll never get enough._

 _There is no part of my hunger for Adam that’ll ever be satisfied. It’s a realisation I’ve come to accept and even fucking embrace. I don’t want to be over Adam, I never want any of this to be routine._

 _I just want it to be mine._

 _And by some freak of fucking nature, it is._

 _Then before I can blink, I’m on my back with Adam looming over me. His lips are swollen from me and his own teeth, his eyes look dazed but they are anything but unfocused. Fuck no, I know he’s focused on nothing but me and I have to say being on the end of a look that intense feels like he’s already fucking me._

 _“Finally decided what you wanted, did you, Babyboy?”_

 _“I’ve always known what I wanted.”_

 _And waited so fucking patiently while I worked out that I wanted the exact same thing._

 _“So whatcha waiting for?”_

 _“I’m not waiting, I’m savouring.”_

 _If I didn’t think I was in for it before then, well, I know I am now. As Adam starts the nibbling thing he does so fucking well along my chest, all I can do is relax into the bed, letting him have every reaction, raw and uncensored._

 _He deserves nothing less. And he always gets more._

~*~

I always thought it would be the mark on my neck that would tell me I was loved.

You know, it’s public and out there and ownership and everything that love with Adam isn’t.

Yeah, I know I shouldn’t have needed a slap upside of my head to realise that one, but I did.

Because being in love with Adam is private, and weirdly silent. It’s just being safe, no matter what, and knowing you’d do anything for the man that everybody thinks is already invincible. It’s holding him when he cries because he just has to.

And it’s a tender to the touch, raised bruise on my hipbone. Right where my jeans sit. And rub. And remind.

I was the only person that ever knew it was there, which is exactly how it’s meant to be. Because the fact Adam was in love with me didn’t belong to anybody but us.

It still doesn’t.

~*~

 _“You really wanna go again?”_

 _Man I love the fact that when Adam’s almost completely fucked out, his ability to make separate words all the time goes out the window._

 _“You’re the baby and you’re telling me you can’t?”_

 _Adam’s laugh is weak as he shifts enough to pull me on top of him, and then shifts into a moan when I kiss the muscle of his shoulder. The mewl comes when the skin covering the muscle is worked between my teeth. I only let go long enough to kiss him again before working at his flesh some more._

 _“Fuck, Tommy, harder…just fucking harder.”_

 _I can do that, and after moving all of an inch to my right I do._

 _“Yeah, baby…just like that.”_

 _His hand is stroking along my spine, softly up, then down and I wonder if he can feel me purr around the mouthful of his skin. Adam knows my fetish for being petted and he knows the exact reaction he’ll get when he drags his short blunt nails over the sensitive skin, and the shudder works through me from the inside out._

 _“You know everybody thinks you have a pain kink, don’t you, Tommy Joe?”_

 _There’s a third mark by the time I raise my head to look at him._

 _“Yeah, I know. But what about you, Adam, what do you think?”_

 _Because of all people he knows I am not into any kind of real pain._

 _“Your kink isn’t pain, it’s sensation. The petting, scratching, biting, hair pulling, fucking, all of it, you just love to fucking feel. Even when you touch me, you make every action feel as different as you can for both of us. And it’s not even a bedroom thing. It’s what gets me so fucking bent when you’re snuggled up to Isaac, because I fucking know what touch is to you, and since you’re mine, that should be fucking mine as well.”_

 _“Fuck, Adam, I cuddle up to everybody from Mia to Mike, it’s not…they’re not you. It’s not like us, it never will be.”_

 _Doesn’t he fucking know that by now?_

 _“I know that, but…”_

 _But sometimes I wish Brad Bell just didn’t exist._

 _“There’s no need for buts, baby, they’re not who I’m in love with and you know it.”_

 _Adam’s smile doesn’t just light up his face, it makes the whole fucking room glow._

 _“Yeah, I do.”_

 _“Good.”_

 _If you think Adam’d be good with that monster cock of his, you really need to put some thought into what he can do with his mouth, because, honestly? Singing is the second most talented thing he can do with it._

~*~

It’s not that I’d never marked Adam before then, because hello, healthy sex life and Adam loves all the aspects of biting, including being bitee as well as the biter, but there was something special about that night.

It was the fact we’d come through insecurities that belonged to both of us, my stupid jealousy, and Adam’s moronic possessive streak. We were comfortable and finally knew what loving each other meant.

Adam knowing when to fuck off and leave me alone, and me knowing when to duck because right after that stupid fucking vase hits the wall the screaming will start, not words, sound - and then tears will come.

There’s always ice cream and beer in the fridge and I can mix a decent vodka martini, even though I’d rather drink Jack.

Adam’s idea of dressing up involves velvet and mine still consists of a t-shirt with long sleeves.

For all of Adam’s rambling about how much we’re alike, and how we fit, we’re never going to be interchangeable and, seriously, Brad’s more like Adam than I’ll ever be.

Brad has a boyfriend named Julian now, who freaks me the fuck out, but he can quote the Latin parts from the Exorcist, so weird or not, he can’t be all bad.

No, standing in the shower the morning after, kissing Adam when he was covered in my marks, it told me I knew what they all meant now. Which one means ‘fuck me’, and where the one that means ‘fuck I’m sorry’ will be. ‘Yours’, ‘mine’ and ‘I love you’, I know all of them now.

Kissing the bruised flesh that I could have sworn used to taste different was when I realised that I could write the instruction manual that falling in love with Adam Lambert should come with.

But I won’t.

Because he’s mine now. Mine to mark up, mine to love.

Mine to protect.

Just mine.

He has the bruises to prove it.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the raggedy_edge’s [Sex is Not the Enemy](http://raggedy-edge.livejournal.com/96208.html) Challenge. My prompt is [here](http://caarirose.livejournal.com/723901.html) and not what I’d consider work safe.  
> Beta'ed by celtic_forest with cheerleading by raggedy_edge.  
> Having said all of that, any remaining mistakes belong to me and since I fiddled after I got the beta back, they’re totally my fault.
> 
> The title is lovingly borrowed from a Birds of Tokyo song – Wild at Heart.


End file.
